Jeff Patchell attended the ABCB’s Building Australia’s Future 2015 conference and remains a strong advocate for attending such events.

Call me old-fashioned but the power of experiencing live presentations, followed by the opportunity to mix and converse with presenters and leaders from across our industry, still garners favour with me.

We used to do that as an industry quite a lot but then the internet came along… and it’s supposedly saving the world. Pardon my cynicism.

Sure the internet is great as a (chiefly one-way) communication server but we humans inherited the planet long before the IT world and two-way discussion has worked pretty well – putting aside a world war or two.

And when the subject matter is quite complex and ever changing –such as building and plumbing regulation in the NCC, all the more reason to make the effort to wise-up.
That was my take on the recent Building Australia’s Future 2015 (BAF) conference held mid-September at Surfers Paradise and run by the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB).
Around 600 practitioners attended from all walks of the industry, with building surveyors being the dominant group.

I felt some disappointment with how few suppliers/resellers (you know the guys that want to flog you all those products) made the effort to attend and get involved – after all, they are quick to complain about how difficult it is to influence the rules and regulation that govern their particular sector though – but enough of the grumble from me.

The BAF provided valuable insights for attendees over the three days, with more than 30 speakers as well as keenly attended workshops.

A strong focus was the focus on adopting Performance Based Codes – something quite challenging for many, particularly those who feel comfort in the long standing deemed-to-satisfy approach.

This requires a change of attitude and culture by many groups and individuals across the industry and it is going to take time to educate ‘the masses’. Ultimately there is national benefit and cost saving to be had in many areas – though cost should not come at the expense of long term performance and durability.

Put your feet up!
If you didn’t make it to BAF, the next best option to being there is to view recordings of the presentations. The ABCB filmed the full range of presentations, so visit their website  (www.abcb.gov.au) and look to the bottom left corner for the BAF 2015 Conference tab – Presentations Online.

The technical presentations catered for both building and plumbing streams and were interspersed with some interesting presentations including a futurist, the architect behind Channel 9’s The Block as well as some leading architectural/construction sector thought leaders.

So, off with the NetFlix for a couple of nights and take in a selection of the recorded presentations and you’ll make up for some lost ground (but not the useful networking).

Hand in hand with the push to a performance based code direction is the option of developing your own Alternate Solutions for individual project needs. This subject can be somewhat challenging for practitioners but there are now ample resources on the ABCB website to explain the principles and the process to develop a performance/alternate solution.

Over the coming issues, this magazine will publish real examples of Alternate Solutions and how the owners of those solutions achieved their results and the benefits of that work.

The future of BAF
Developing and managing an event such as BAF 2015 takes lots of time and effort and certainly does side-track the ABCB from its important and cumbersome code development tasks. There was rumour that this might have been the last such national event, I hope that’s not the case. With the move to a 3-year amendment cycle for the NCC, there’s still good reason to provide an opportunity for the sector to get together, even if it is 3-years apart,  for those ever-important face to face discussions.

NCC 2016 National Seminars – coming your way
With the next amendment to the NCC coming into effect from 1 May 2016, the ABCB is presenting a series of seminars around the capital cities, where you will be able to hear and engage with presenters, explaining the various changes.

These events will be well attended, so book early and note it in your diary.